July 7, 2017

I haven't posted an artist of the week in a while. Here are two sculptors:

Arlene Shechet and Lynda Benglis.

Although two very different artists, different mediums and approaches, they both embrace process and have a painterly, corporeal quality to them. And of course, all that luscious pouring and hand-building of color and form!

Lynda Benglis, Corner Piece, 1969

Lynda Benglis is a heroine of mine, and not just for her audacious artworld antics back in the day! I first saw her work in 1997 at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center where I worked. It was a floor piece from the 70's that I looked at everyday for the two months of the exhibition. I have to admit that at the time I really did not get it at all!

Lynda Benglis, King Pin III, 2007

Fast forward to 2011. I was playing around with spray foam making little gold sculptures for a show I was curating, and who did I come across but Lynda Benglis and her pieces Helios and King Pin, which not only looked almost exactly like what I was making, but were way better, more sophisticated, and executed a whole decade before mine! Needless to say, I took the time to really look at her work after that. She's been creating relevant artwork for five decades now. I'm embarrassed I was so clueless when I first encountered that floor piece! but she has become one of my favorite artists..

"It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc...The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written... I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive."Excerpt from Mary Oliver's essay Of Power And Time